RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://creativedestructionmedia.com/analysis/2019/06/22/u-s-china-trade-war-part-two-the-thucydides-trap/“We have met the enemy, and they are us.”

Pogo

Intellectual elites and mainstream media have been captivated by Dr. Graham Allison and his prediction that China and the United States are inexorably heading toward war. Like Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, “The End of History and the Last Man,” Dr. Allison’s book is fatally flawed. 

Fukuyama’s analysis of the fall of the Soviet Union created a storm of controversy in learned circles. He postulated that the victory of democracy and capitalism over communism meant that there were no more challenges to freedom and global security, and therefore history was ended. His book is based on philosophers like Plato, Hegel and Marx. Like Fukuyama’s work, the best-selling book by Dr. Graham Allison “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” is also based on an ancient Greek philosopher. 

The Greek philosopher Allison used was also a general in the wars in which Sparta, an ascending power, ultimately defeated Athens, the most powerful city-state in the Greek multi-state ‘polis.’ Based on a comment by general-philosopher Thucydides, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable,” Allison and his team in Harvard’s ‘Thucydides Trap Project’ cited 16 instances in the last five hundred years in which an established power was challenged by an ascending power. In 12 of those 16 examples, the rivalry resulted in war. 

Allison considers the United States and China to be the 17th case, with the Harvard Belfer Center describing it as “irresistible rising China is on course to collide with an immovable America.” Among the reasons the work of Allison and his team is flawed, besides describing China as “irresistible,” is that they ignored important details in their 16 examples. One such detail is that in 11 of the 12 cases that resulted in war, the cause was a rising power (like Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany) that was violently and aggressively expanding its territory.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14443/trump-rescue-china-communism

China has violated its WTO promises and all the other trade deals. Now, President Trump is seeking to remedy Beijing’s failure to follow promises — and its continued annual theft of hundreds of billions of dollars of American intellectual property — by inking another pact.

Moreover, Washington’s determination to end Chinese theft of intellectual property also undermines Xi Jinping’s signature Made in China 2025 initiative to dominate eleven critical technologies by that year.

In short, there is no chance that Xi will comply with any agreement that is acceptable to the United States.

A trade agreement now will be seen as an end to the “trade war” and as Trump’s support for Xi. A pact, therefore, would constitute America’s fourth great rescue of Chinese communism.

Three times — in 1972, 1989, and 1999 — American presidents rescued Chinese communism. Now, Xi Jinping’s China, plagued by problems of his own making, desperately needs a lifeline.

A trade deal with President Donald Trump looks as if it is the only thing that can revive the Chinese economy and thereby save Xi’s brand of communism. Many, in fact, are urging Trump to drop his Section 301 tariffs and sign such a pact.

Will the American president do so?

At the moment, Xi is besieged, blamed for multiple policy mistakes. First, his relentlessly pursued back-to-Mao policies have helped push the Chinese economy downward, perhaps to the point of contraction, as May’s depressing numbers suggest. Perhaps the most indicative statistic is that of imports, which during the month fell 8.5%, a clear sign of softening domestic demand.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14364/india-modi-minorities

“In cases involving mobs killing an individual based on false accusations of cow slaughter or forced conversion, police investigations and prosecutions often were not adequately pursued. Rules on the registration of foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were discriminatorily implemented against religious minority groups…” — United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Annual Report, 2019.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi must now make it his mission to realize his own mantra, and guarantee the safety and freedom of all minorities in his country.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s landslide re-election on May 23 presents an opportunity to correct societal ills that in past years have been neglected. In particular, Modi, who was sworn in on May 30, might focus on addressing the concerns of the country’s minorities.

Modi has long been talking of “sabkasaath, sabkavikas” (“everyone’s support, everyone’s development”). Upon his re-election, he added to the motto,”sabkavishwas” (“everyone’s trust”).

“This is our mantra,” Modi said in an address in the central hall of Parliament to MPs of his Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP). “I will work for all citizens of India.”

Modi’s statement is in keeping with the Constitution of India, which states that no citizen is denied “equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India” (Article 14); prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion (Articles 15 and 16); grants everyone freedom of speech and expression (Articles 19 and 21); gives every individual the right to practice religion (Articles 25 to 28); and grants minorities the right to conserve their own culture and language, and run their own educational institutions (Articles 29 and 30).

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274097/musical-chairs-britain-bruce-bawer

Last week the people Britain were treated to a prolonged game of musical chairs, with the candidates for head of the Conservative Party – and thus Prime Minister – being reduced, day by day, in a series of votes by their party colleagues in Westminster, from six – Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid, Rory Stewart, and Dominic Raab – to five to four to three to two. In the televised debates that were held along the way, the contenders displayed all the usual ambition and aplomb and deployed all the usual rhetoric about all the usual issues. Yes, Brexit, as expected, was Topic A. But at the June 16 debate on Channel 4 – from which Johnson, the former London mayor and odds-on favorite to succeed Theresa May as PM, chose to absent himself – nobody exhibited a credible sense of urgency about getting Brexit done already, now that three supposedly firm deadlines have come and gone, each time ratcheting up public rage and frustration.

At the June 18 debate on the BBC, with Johnson in attendance this time – and setting the tone with an expression of firm determination to honor the current Brexit deadline of October 31 – his competitors at least paid lip service to the notion of urgency. But at least two of them still didn’t get it: with classic English nonchalance, Hunt said he would be willing to “take a big longer” to withdraw from the EU, and Gove conceded he wouldn’t mind if it took an “extra couple of days” to get Brexit done. Viewers who had been following month after month of Brexit speeches in the House of Commons were treated to yet more of the tiresome nit-picking and hair-splitting – not to mention rote hand-wringing about the purportedly dire potential consequences of a no-deal Brexit – that they’ve seen at Westminster and that have brought the Tories to the brink of disaster.